A tactical operative. The woman who bankrolled his daughter's infection. One financial trail left to trace.Thorne raised his weapon the moment he understood what she built.He lowered it when he understood she was the only person who could save his daughter.THORNE is a Guardian HRS operative. He has killed men in six countries, buried teammates, and made peace with the cost of the job. Nothing prepared him for standing in the wreckage of Phoenix's control room, listening to a woman describe the pediatric compassionate-use trials his daughter enrolled in - and understanding in real time that Lily's bell-ringing wasn't a cure. It was a countdown.JULIANNA STRATTON built the financial architecture that funded everything - the AI, the bioweapon program, the shell companies, the clinics. She didn't design ML-273. She designed the system that paid for it. The distinction stopped mattering the moment she understood what the system became.Now Phoenix has fallen. Senator Vance is dead on the control room floor. And Thorne's daughter is six years old with something in her blood that Julianna's money put there.He zip-tied her wrists in the Nevada desert. She reconstructed the ASHFALL architecture from memory. Neither of them planned on what happens when the only person standing between you and oblivion is the man who hates you - and the only person who can save a child is the woman who never meant to endanger one.Julianna has rebuilt empires. She can trace every patient, every corrupted dollar, every node in the network she designed.Some debts don't clear. Some men don't forgive.Even the ones who touch you like they want to. Enemies to lovers slow burn Forced proximity protection detail Touch her and die alpha hero Single father / child in danger Morally gray heroine / captive dynamic He can't admit he's falling She thinks she doesn't deserve to be saved AI conspiracy / romantic suspense Found family, earned HEAFor readers of protector romance, tactical romance, and dark romantic suspense - where the tension is a loaded weapon and the love story is the safety coming off.One-click Thorne and read the stunning conclusion to the Cerberus series.
